The Cubic Prism (WOE week 24)

Write At The Merge challenge this week is to use the word tesseract along with an image of a cluttered table.

It's been a while since I've been there, and it's been even longer since I've worked with my Gibson Girls. I'm hoping I'm not too rusty.

I give you the following in response: Speaking in the Fourth Dimension

Penny rejoined her sister in the living room armed with pumpkin pie. "Ams, look what I found."

“Are you sure about that last word? Prestidigitator doesn’t seem to fit.” Amber looked up from her crossword puzzle, frowning. "Where was that hiding?"

Penny glanced over her twin’s shoulder at the scribble in the column, "It wasn’t hiding. Grams left it out on the counter. That a is supposed to be an i.” She pointed at the wrong letter before she plopped down in the worn armchair, dislodging throw cushions in the process. "I wish she had cream cheese."

“You know I’ve changed that a hundred times,” Amber flipped her pencil about to use the eraser again. "On sweet potato pie?"

“It’s pumpkin, Silly. Although, why not? Some would argue that they taste similar.”

“Yuck,” Done with her latest correction, Amber tapped her pencil to her chin. “Good Earth author, four letters.”

“Buck.” She paused before giggling, “That rhymed.”

“You sure that’s pumpkin pie?” Amber cocked an eyebrow before applying her pencil to her puzzle. “Grams can’t have pumpkin with her renal diet you know.”

“She’s not supposed to have sweet potatoes either.” Penny squished a bite of pie around her teeth, savoring the memories. Grams always kept a can of pumpkin in case Grandda did something to earn a pie. “Wonder if he misses this.”

“Who? Buck?”

“Pearl Buck, dingaling. As in girl.”

“Why’d you call her a dude? Fourth Dimension Cube.”

“And now you’re rhyming Ams. I was talking about Dad. Being in the military. I wondered if he misses the pies.”

“Penns, they have pie in the military.  Maybe even sweet potato pie. There’s entirely too many ehssez.”

Penny swallowed and, refusing to leave any scrumptious morsel behind, scraped her plate with her fork for the last bits. “I said it was pumpkin. What do you mean ehssez?”

“Not ehssez. Blank, blank, s, s, blank, s…”

“What’s the clue again?”

“Fourth dimension cube. It isn’t a reference to that stupid space odyssey you’re always talking about, is it?”

“The Next Generation isn’t…” Penny bit her tongue. “OW!”

“That doesn’t have any s…what’d you do this time?”

“I think that last s gave me a toothache.” Penny set her dish on the footstool and crossed the floor to the card table. Cluttered with correspondence and advertisements, the table was the catch-all for the last few days. “I’ll find it someday.”

“What?”

“My brain.” Penny shuffled some papers around and spied toothpicks next to the sugar cubes. “That’s logical.”

Amber snorted. “Okay, Dr. Spock.”

“Mr. Spock, oh never mind. You said blank, blank, s, s, blank, s…are you sure that last s isn’t an r?”

“Yeah. Bisdhouse…oops, you’re right an r.”

“Tesseract.” Penny returned with a handful of toothpicks and the sugar cubes.

“What’s a tesseract?”

“The 4D thingy. I’m going to build you one.”

Amber snatched the sugar bowl away. “Oh no you don’t. You promised me Disneyland, not a science project.”

Story Dam: Domino Thoughts

This week's Story Dam I incorporated a little into my post for Red Writing Hood, then I decided to give another set of characters a scene of their own. The wet feet portion fits their respective personalities best. We last met Amber and Penny here.

First though, the prompt as follows:

Dam Burst: Write a piece, fiction or non, in which your character suddenly finds themselves somewhere and have no clue how they got there.

Wet Feet: Write a piece, also fiction or non, in which your character goes through a domino thought process.


I offer the following in response: At Grandma's House

“That the paper? Toss me the crossword,” Amber entered the room with pencil at the ready.

Penny shot her twin a look. “Please?” she hinted.

Sagging into their grandfather’s worn armchair, her sister replied with a devilish grin, “You’re welcome.”

Sighing, Penny sacrificed her article as she passed the section over, making a mental note to read the rest later. The sports section stared at her. Touching the color picture underneath the headline, she traced the basketball players absently. Grandda would have read this whole thing once, she reminisced. “Ams, remember how mad Grandda would get when the paperboy threw the paper into the morning glories?”

“No,” she replied dryly. “Okay, eight letters, abandons religious faith.”

“Apostate,” she said, flipping through the sports in the search of something different. “He used to get so angry, that little vein on the side of his head would bulge. Ooh, Macy’s is having a sale,” she announced, reading an ill-placed add.

“When aren’t they having a sale?” Amber rolled her eyes. “Nine, ten, eleven letters for sweet or musical. Melodious?”

“That’s only nine,” Penny answered, “Try mellifluous.”

“M-a-l-“

“No, M-e-l-l-ifluous.”

“Oh yeah,” she erased and brushed the debris away. The pencil scratched the correction as Amber continued, “Why bring up Grandda? He’s been gone forever.”

“Oh the paper reminds me of him. Grams doesn’t even read it I think.”

“No one reads the paper, Penns. That’s what the internet is for.”

Their dad appeared in the doorway. He was still dressed in his fatigues and looked tired around the edges. “You girls okay in here?”

“Yessir,” Amber replied, straightening her back instantly. “Just reading the paper. Penns has the sports section if you want it.”

He smiled and glanced furtively down the hallway. Whispering cautiously, he replied, “Not unless it has the swimsuit issue.”

Penny groaned, “Dad, really?”

He shrugged, “What can I say? I’m a red-blooded U.S. Marine.” He spun on his heel with military precision and disappeared from the doorway.

“Hoorah,” Amber said.

Penny turned to the next page. The tide times were listed alongside an article that discussed the last grunion run. She shivered involuntarily at the memory of standing on the beach one spring, freezing in the ocean breeze, chasing the little fish while the tidewater chased her.

“Five letters: largest artery,” her sister interrupted her thoughts.

Glancing sideways at her, Penny said, “Aorta. Did you want to go?”

She looked about the room before responding, “Go where, Penns?”

“To the Huntington Library, where else?”

She frowned. “Where’d the Huntington Library come from? Study of rock layers?”

“No, the Huntington Library was established by Henry Huntington in 1919. Grandda has a bench there. I just thought…” Penny answered, losing track of her place in the article.

“No, I need a word that means the study of rock layers.”

“Stratigraphy. Didn’t you take geology your freshman year?”

“Yup, I learned that the earth has plates and volcanoes are named for the Greek god Vulcan.”

“Roman god Vulcan,” Penny corrected, without malice, setting the sports section aside and transferring to travel. “So do you want to go or not?”

Amber rolled her eyes, “Greek, Roman, what’s the difference?”

“Don’t ask if you don’t want the answer,” Penny warned. She knew her sister would ignore her after the first sentence. “We could go to the Getty instead.”

Her sister squished her face in response. “You can go to the Getty. I’ll stay here and help Dad dig out the bomb shelter.”

Penny sighed, disappointed. Trying to introduce culture to Amber had always been difficult. She despised still art in any medium and dusty old books never held her fascination, no matter the wealth of information contained within. “Disneyland?”

Amber lit up, “Deal.”

Write On Edge: BLT Challenge

400-word limit gifted by Red Writing Hood inspired a break from my recent characters. Sure, I could accept the challenge to invent an early 14th century BLT for my crusader. I even started writing the scene when an entirely different image popped into my mind. Here's the prompt:


Plump tomatoes, salty bacon, crisp lettuce, soft bread, this week we want you to be inspired by the BLT. Write a piece of either fiction or creative non-fiction based on this photo.

 I asked myself a question. What happens if the photo is misleading?


I offer the following in response: BLT Revisited

The sun slowly burned through the foggy barrier revealing tractor rigs and sign posts like a magician with a wand. Penny sat with her twin at a distressed booth in Spooners, their traditional stop off the interstate, bemoaning the miles left to go on their trek home from Northeastern University.  Ancient décor scared away those that the locale hadn’t, but the food was cheap and nobody cared they wore pajamas.

“Five letters: glacial inlet?” Amber asked, tapping her pen against her folded magazine.

“Fjord,” Penny replied without hesitation as she investigated the pieces of her BLT. The menu photo was overly optimistic, she thought. “This doesn’t taste right.”

“It never does,” she quipped, last jot complete. “Six letters: Rock Star and City in MO.”

A server slopped refills in their coffee cups in passing, splashing some in his lackadaisical manner. Penny hailed him back, “I’m sorry, can we get some extra napkins?”

He disappeared with a grunt. Amber muttered, “Thanks for nothin’.”

“Be nice, Ams, it’s not like this diner is the Ritz.” The bacon was undercooked, the lettuce tired, and the tomato flat. Penny reached for the salt-shaker. “Joplin,” she answered finally. “Why do tomatoes taste like candles?”

“Bee ni-ice,” she mimicked, rolling her eyes. “Apples an’ tomatoes are waxed to keep them shiny in supermarkets.” With a disapproving scowl, she warned, “Salt isn’t good for you.”

Napkins were tossed onto the table without a clear point of origin. “Yes, well neither is bacon or mayonnaise for that reason.” After mopping the table, Penny smashed her sandwich back together. She took a timid bite to taste, and dissatisfied, dismantled it again.

“Plant lice?” Amber asked, spiriting the salt-shaker away.

She made a face in response. “They’re not good for you either,” she stated, fetching the pepper.

“No, Penns, a five-letter word for plant lice.”

“Aphid.” She finished her dousing of pepper.

Amber sneezed violently. “Geez! How much pepper dijya put on that slop?”

She forced another disappointed swallow, “Not enough. You should’ve let me keep the salt.”

“Look, you gonna finish that sometime today? Fog’s lifted an’ I wanna get home before midnight.”

“Are you going to finish your crossword?” she mocked, plating the partially-consumed sandwich. She fished a Jackson from her wallet and pinned it to the table with the pepper-shaker. Lukewarm coffee downed, they abandoned the broken BLT to its fate and happily made for the exit.